Tonight I had the wonderful opportunity to hear bestselling author Paula McLain speak. She is best known for The Paris Wife, historical fiction from the perspective of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife Hadley. McLain is now promoting her newest novel, Love and Ruin, which I have already read and included in my favorite books of 2018.
Following my usual rules for attending a book event I arrived early, sat in the back, and was therefore the very first person to get my book signed; this certainly capped off my amazing experience (more on this later).
McLain has created (accidently, she claims) a sub-genre of historical fiction by telling the stories of marginalized women. For example, two of her heroines were married to Ernest Hemingway, but these women have stories in their own right.
The Big Idea
McLain started her remarks by recalling her struggles as a writer before finding that “big idea.” After writing a couple of books on her childhood and family (she grew up in foster homes), McLain was passionate about and proud of her work but remembers speaking at “book events” with only one attendee and was later receiving negative royalty statements from her publisher. She said the publisher also would send her offers to buy her remaining books at a discount. ouch!
But one day while she was reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast to escape her situation, McLain noticed Hadley was only mentioned a couple of times. One mention is him coming home from all his “Hemingway routines” to her making a salad for dinner, and the other mention was that he would rather have died than not fallen in love with her. She wondered how this Midwestern woman felt living in as an expat in Paris in his shadow. McLain remembers the hair standing up on the back of her neck as she knew she found her “big idea.”
She joked that she could not afford to visit Paris for research and wrote the book almost as far away, literally and figuratively, from a Parisian café as possible, at a Starbucks in Cleveland. But she wrote it in 7 months!
Later at a book event in St. Louis, Hadley’s nephew attended and said “Aunt Hadley taught me to dance; she was a wonderful person, now the world knows.”
I was most struck by her saying she actually “became Hadley” to write this book. She so intensely became Hadley that that she swore she would never write about Hemingway again because “he broke her heart.”
But, of course, she did eventually write about Hemingway again in Love and Ruin. I already wrote a long post praising this book, about Hemingway’s third wife who was journalist Martha Gellhorn.
Once again, I am just so amazed how funny and personable authors are when they speak. As the last three have been men it was so nice to hear a woman author.
And being the first one in line, I had the opportunity to talk to her a bit. Well actually, she asked me questions because I generally become tongue tied around anyone famous. I eventually managed to tell her I have a book blog, which she recognized because we have interacted some on Instagram. Then she asked me my favorite books of this year and I totally blanked!!! I’m still feeling a bit embarrassed about that – LOL – but overall it was a really nice experience and I have her other popular book in my to-read pile: Circling the Sun: A Novel. This one is about Beryl Markham, who is caught up in a love triangle with a safari hunger and the author of Out of Africa. In our quick talk, she said this woman may be her favorite.
Her inscription says, “Leslie, I hope you’ll love my badass hero Beryl Markham!” So needless to say I’ll be starting this book soon!
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